Volunteers feeding homeless in downtown Houston ticketed by HPD officer

On Wednesday night, a guy who was a part of a group of volunteers distributing food to the homeless received a ticket from the Houston police.

Members of “Food Not Bombs” were distributing food outside Houston’s major public library, according to Click 2 Houston. A Houston Police Department officer gave them the order to halt and depart after serving around 100 individuals.

The volunteers, on the other hand, chose to remain still and carry on distributing food, which led to the officer issuing a penalty to one man. The individual will be required to appear in court and might be fined up to $2,000.

Ben Franklin Craft-Rendon, a Food Not Bombs volunteer, was cited by the police on Wednesday for breaking the city’s charitable feeding law.

KHOU11 reports that the city recently changed a law so that charitable feedings are now only permitted at one location, which just so happens to be near to a Houston Police Department headquarters. On Friday last week, the new ordinance became effective.

Public feedings outside the Downtown Library near City Hall are prohibited, according to a notice this week from the City of Houston. Instead, feedings should take place at 61 Riesner Street, which is a location just west of downtown.

The organization claimed that it has been operating incident-free from the same location four evenings a week for almost 20 years.

The organisation, which earlier in the week held a news conference to criticise the new regulation and has previously disobeyed city ordinances, declared it will return to its regular location outside the library in the future.